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Wednesday, April 24, 2024

Darts & Laurels 09/16/16: Trump, South Park and technology

You’re sitting alone in your car in Archer Road’s typical rush-hour traffic. As a small commando unit of scooters whizzes by you left and right, you fiddle with the radio, looking for something to listen to. As you’re navigating through the various snippets of sound, one station grabs your attention and demands you to listen. It’s just one man’s voice, chanting something over and over and over again. You find this uncomfortable and unsettling. What is it this strange man chants? Well, dear readers, that something is…

Darts & Laurels

“South Park” had its 20th season premiere on Comedy Central on Wednesday night. The episode parodies the drama that surrounds the whole sit-or-kneel-instead-of-stand-during-the-national-anthem debacle. Moreover, it also spoofed our upcoming presidential election, having the inept and wholeheartedly clueless former fourth-grade teacher Mr. Garrison represent The Don. We give a laurel to Trey Stone and Matt Parker for so brilliantly spoofing the notion that Trump honestly has no idea what he’s doing in terms of navigating the complex political sphere.

Oh Lord, Donald Trump. If you think he’s bad, Donald Trump Jr. is even worse. Yesterday he announced Papa Don will not be releasing his tax returns, a practice most presidential nominees have honored since the mid-’70s. This dart is not only presented to grease-fire hairdos Don and Don Jr., but also to those who criticize politicians for quiet and corrupt practices but refuse to acknowledge these same practices in their preferred candidate. I mean seriously, making tax returns public is a given. Why do Trump supporters think their candidate is exempt from engaging in well-founded and fundamentally transparent political practices?

Speaking of blatant hypocrisy and confirmation bias, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has always been notoriously anti-marijuana, so when he approved a bill Wednesday that allows the use of medical marijuana for those with post-traumatic stress disorder, we were all pleasantly surprised. We present a laurel to Gov. Christie, who clearly does not need the influence of marijuana to experience the munchies.

Oh, and the late night munchies are back, fellow Gators. Italian Gator Pizza by the Slice has officially reopened and is cranking out some fresh garlic rolls and pizza slices. However, not all appreciate the luxury that is late-night, drunkenly craved, made-with-love pizza. Pizza Touch, a company based in Orlando, Florida, recently announced plans to introduce pizza vending machines across Central Florida in the coming months. Perhaps the city truly is magical. But we here at the Alligator do not welcome our soon-to-be robot overlords, and for that, we present a dart to these automatic food dispensers.

Don’t pretend the war isn’t coming, dear readers. That’s why we still release our paper in print. While an online platform is available, we’re willing to sacrifice those trees in order to prevent Skynet and its sister company, Samsung Group, which recently released the Galaxy Note 7, from complete domination. While the phone’s new features are undeniably innovative, the fact that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission formally recalled the phone Thursday due to reports of exploding and overheating batteries is pretty horrific. So far, people have suffered from some pretty serious burns as a result of this defect. We give a dart to Samsung for overlooking this hardware flaw.

But Samsung isn’t the only mobile phone company that sold a phone with hardware flaws. Apple Inc. messed up so bad. Not only did they purposely omit a headphone jack on their new iPhone 7, but then they had the audacity to describe this omission as “courageous.” There’s nothing courageous about making iPhone users buy (probably Apple-licensed) Bluetooth headphones when Apple has perfectly good ones already. We give a dart to both Apple and those of you who are falling for this.

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